Monday, December 29, 2014

-stan

The hyphen shows that this has nothing to do with the name "Stanley". It is the suffix for a land or country, as in Pakistan Hindustan, Waziristan, Kurdistan, etc.
I like the two "anchors" on the PBS Newshour, which Barbara & I watch almost every night (Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff) But they don't pronounce "-stan" properly. The main additional announcer is Hari Sreenivasan, who pronounces it correctly as "stahn". The BBC also use the right pronunciation.
I sometimes wonder why their producer doesn't instruct them to use the same pronunciation. On the other hand, if she/he did order them to con form, it would be the "wrong" one. So I am thankful when Hari is the news reader.